The Desolate Heart
by fandomfatale
Summary: John Blake and Selina Kyle cross paths during Gotham's occupation. Sex and unwanted feelings ensue. Canon compliant/*not* AU. You don't know that you ship it but you actually do. John/Selina, Bruce/Selina. Work In Progress.
1. Chapter 1 The Visitor

TITLE: The Desolate Heart

DISCLAIMER: I'm no one. I own nothing. Fun intended, not copyright infringement.

SUMMARY: John Blake and Selina Kyle cross paths during Gotham's occupation. Sex and unwanted feelings ensue. Canon compliant/*not* AU. You don't know that you ship it but you actually do. John/Selina, Bruce/Selina. Work In Progress.

CHAPTER ONE – THE VISITOR

When she's told she has a visitor, she doesn't let her herself hope that it's him.

He's dead.

Even if he's not dead, he's got a fractured back and he's not visiting her.

But she hopes anyway.

The guard puts her into cuffs - looser than he should but she's not going to try anything – and walks her down the block to the visiting room. Blackgate is maximum security but they don't put a plate of thick glass between her and Detective Blake. Her heart sinks because of who he _isn't_ when she sees him in the corner, sitting at a cozy table for two. She recognizes the arms that had helped her down the stairs the night she traded Bruce Wayne's fingerprints for something that didn't exist, and the anxious eyes that had pleaded with her vainly the day before for assurance that that same man was alive and well.

She sits down across from him, rests her elbows on the table, and sighs impatiently. There's no one else within earshot except for the guard, whom Blake gestures to back off.

"She's dangerous," the guard protests.

"I know," Blake responds, and his words are laced with an accusation that Selina feels in every molecule of her body. "It's OK," he assures the guard, who nods and takes up a sentry position in the front of the room.

"What do you want?" she demands tiredly.

He removes a map from the stack of papers beside him and unfurls it for her. The sewer tunnels. She notices her file in the stack: there's a coffee stain on the top of the folder and the page corners are curling – she would have sworn it had been freshly printed when he had waved it in her face while interrogating her at the airport.

"Where's Bane?" he asks. "Just point."

"Why should I help you? You put me here. The food's alright but the company could be better and orange isn't really my color."

"No, it's not," he agrees, point-blank.

She looks at him sharply. She would have made a flirty display of being insulted, but she is genuinely offended for a second and it throws her.

"If you think I'm gonna tell you where to find Bane then you belong in Arkham," she informs him calmly. "You haven't seen him. What he can do. But you will." For the thousandth time she hears the crack of Bruce's spine, sees Batman's broken helmet on the ground.

"I could get you out of here," Blake bargains. He glances around the room and takes in the harsh fluorescent light, the ugly brown carpet, the handful of brawny, tattooed male inmates sitting at other tables in traffic-cone jumpsuits that match hers. She sees a flash of guilt cross his face. Guilt about putting her in this place.

It thaws her a little, this guilt: "If I thought you had any chance of stopping him, maybe I'd spill. As it is: I'm saving your fucking life. Go home, Detective. Better yet, get out of town. You caught me at the airport for a reason. Like I mentioned then, it wasn't you I was running from." She feels the warnings pouring out of her mouth and she isn't quite sure why. She imagines Blake dead in the streets, blood pooling in his trench coat, and she reiterates: "Pack up your first edition comic books and your photo albums and your sweaters from Mommy and get the fuck out of dodge because Bane can't be stopped." She sets her hands down on the table with a clank of cuffs.

He's a little rattled by her certainty but his tone is steady: "I don't have the luxury of not caring what happens to Gotham, Miss Kyle."

She lifts her eyebrows. "Oh? Got family here? A girlfriend?" There's a note of contempt in her voice for the inconstancy and inadequacy of human attachments, and she knows it's because she's bruised over Bruce and not because she's excessively cynical about the idea of caring about someone, and she thinks he knows it too.

"No girlfriend," he replies. "No family." He takes his badge out of his pocket and places it on the table. "Duty." Then he adds: "And human decency."

"What's that?" she asks innocently.

He meets her eyes unflinchingly, refusing to be embarrassed by or to apologize for his idealism. He wins the staring contest.

"I do work with St. Swithins," Blake begins.

"The orphanage?" She's cleaning her fingernails, bored.

He nods.

"_Your_ orphanage?" she posits. "No family…You grew up there, didn't you?" Her fingernails are abandoned, she's looking at him now.

He doesn't reward her masterful guesswork with an answer. "A lot of those boys get in trouble. I know all the P.D.'s. I could get you a good one, since I'm guessing you can't afford one of those high-powered downtown attorneys. With a good defense you could get off the kidnapping charge. You're guilty of a lot more than that," he brandishes her file, "but we can't prove it."

Blake notes that she does not look convinced. "And I could talk to the D.A. myself," he sweetens.

Selina twists towards him. "So this would be a _personal_ favor?" she inquires, eyes lit with suggestion.

There's a subtle shift in him. She suspects her flirtation makes him uncomfortable but he doesn't show it either way. "I'm also on good terms with Commissioner Gordon. If you helped us…"

"Save your breath, Detective," she interrupts. "I'm not so sure I need your help to get out of here, anyway."

"No one escapes from Blackgate."

"That's what they said about the Bastille."

His French history is rusty but he gets her hint. "They're going to storm the prison?" He frowns in growing concern.

She shrugs. "I don't get the memos. But Bane's got big plans. His men are dedicated, well-trained; but he's still going to need more than he has and almost everyone in here would serve him willingly. They've got real hate-ons for the municipal authority – you can imagine. Well, it's what _I_ would do." She leans back in the flimsy plastic chair.

"So this is more than organized crime…" The gears in Blake's mind turn: "He wants an army."

Fear flickers in Selina's eyes, and Blake lets himself categorize her as an opportunist, but not necessarily a menace. She's not loyal to Bane. She's not cruel.

Blake leans forward and assures her in a low voice: "We'll protect you, Miss Kyle. A transfer. Witness protection after you're released."

His whisper is warm and encouraging and confidential, it wraps around her like a hug and she wants to believe him, but she knows better. She rolls her eyes and for the second time scoffs at his naivete: "You can't protect me. You can't protect _anyone_." Her warning to Bruce floats through her mind: _There's a storm coming…_

Blake is fed up with her. He folds up the map, tucks his badge safely away in his pocket. "Fine. You've got nothing to lose but your life, so I can see why you're so protective of it." Again he indicates her file, and she suddenly realizes it looks 10 years old because in one day he has read it front to back enough times to have it memorized. She's ashamed of the picture it paints – a girl barely treading water, a girl with no one and nothing.

"Considering you look like you're about 12, you're pretty good at this detective stuff," she compliments patronizingly. "Don't feel bad: I'm a tough nut to crack." She taps her file, the cuffs clamoring against the table. "I'm sure you picked up on that." She had been arrested plenty of times, but no matter how hard they pushed she never incriminated herself. If they needed a confession to convict her they sure as hell weren't going to get it.

She gave Blake a knowing look about the file, her eyes twinkling with insinuation, and she thought there was the slightest hint of a blush crawling up his cheeks, almost confirming her suspicion that his preoccupation with it was more than the means to a work-related end.

"Thank you," he replies to her earlier statement, not missing a beat. "It was a recent promotion." His frustration with her is not easily diffused, but she notes a small release of tension from his shoulders as he engages her in a slightly more casual conversation.

"I _thought _you were a uni the first time I saw you," she murmurs, recalling the handsome and fastidious young man in the full-fledged Gotham Police Department uniform, barely illuminated by the soft orange glow of the street light, converging on her as she fled the bar and the violent mess her failed negotiations with Stryver had left in their wake. "Rookie move, letting me leave the scene like that," she criticizes.

He's flattered she remembers him at all, but she's right. The lovely damsel in distress act had done him in. Gorgeous girl, immense eyes, tight black dress, flowing hair – he almost thinks he would have handed her his gun if she had asked. "I had other priorities," he defends. "There was a firefight, a missing congressman. But we got our man, didn't we?" he finishes, smugly, indicating her with a throw of his chin.

"Your _woman_," she corrects, and she doesn't let him forget it. She arches her back a little, and even through the loose jump suit he can see the outlines of her appealing curves. "In fact I wish you were a worse cop," she begins. "That way you might not have recognized me. You saw me for half a second in a dark alley. My face must have made _quite_ an impression," she speculates. It's an indictment: he's guilty of finding her attractive, alluring, fascinating. She needs him to admit it. All she's got is this game and a hard cot in a cold, concrete cell.

"You're a pretty girl," he tosses back with a shrug. It's the truth, but he treats it like it's an insignificant remark, a default phrase, a line from a how-to interrogation instruction booklet. He gives her what she wants but saps all the meaning from it, rendering it worthless to her.

"And to think I wore that ridiculous hat for nothing," she laments. "It was supposed to hide my face."

"I liked the hat." He's straight-faced. It's the first thing he's said that wasn't somehow motivated. She gives him a quarter of a sincere smile, a curl of the corner of her lips.

Blake stands with a sigh, giving up on her, though he makes one last-ditch effort to garner some information: "Daggett owns a construction company. He's got sites all over the city."

Selina shrugs. She lifts her eyes to his. "I don't know anything about that."

He believes her.

She can tell he wants to ask about Bruce. He wants to know exactly what happened. A brutal interrogation dances on the edge of his tongue.

But he doesn't ask.

"You can take her back to her cell," he calls out to the guard. Blake leaves. He doesn't say goodbye.

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NOTES: I'm not too good to beg for reviews – they mean the world to me, even if all you want to say is, "I liked it." It's unbeta-ed, so if you noticed any grammatical errors, please do alert me. If you disagree with my characterization in some way, I'd love to discuss it, so don't be afraid to constructively criticize.


	2. Chapter 2 Possessions

CHAPTER TWO - POSSESSIONS

He feels the cold metal of a barrel against the back of his head.

He thinks that maybe coming back to his apartment wasn't such a good idea after all.

And that he should have checked the corners.

Gotham has been under the occupation of Bane's forces for a full week, and Blake hasn't been back to his place since he left there with Gordon after Bane singled the Commissioner out in front of the entire world as an enemy. They both have targets on their backs just for being cops, and being part of even a fledgling and so far ineffectual resistance makes it that much worse, and Blake thinks that maybe this is it, that he's about to be executed, that he's about to die for Gotham.

The steel is unforgiving, but the voice is merely annoyed: "You shouldn't be here." With a sigh she pulls the gun off of him and he turns around slowly to see Selina Kyle.

"Miss Kyle," he greets, wary. His eyes stay on the gun.

He had watched on TV as the inmates of Blackgate came pouring out the front door free as birds, and he had spared, amidst the terror of that moment, a thought for her, wondering if he would ever see her again. He had not expected for their next encounter to happen so soon.

Or in his apartment.

"Don't you know Bane has his men hunting down and killing every cop that isn't trapped underground?" she demands. "Most of them don't even make it to that joke of a court."

"Is that why you're here? To kill me?" In a flash he has his standard issue out of his holster and pointed at her. "I know you're not here for my diamonds."

She laughs nonchalantly: "Not today." And she tucks her compact pistol into the pocket of her designer pea-coat. She points at an open suitcase on his kitchen table, surrounded by a handful of scattered contents. "You interrupted me: I came for my things. Checked out of Evidence to an R. John Blake. (What's the 'R' stand for, Detective?) It wasn't hard to get your address. Even easier to break in. I didn't think I'd run into you – I didn't think you were that stupid."

Her luggage had been confiscated at the airport, and he had taken it home to sift through, hoping for some clue about Bruce Wayne's fate or Bane's plans. It contained mostly clothing, which he had found awkward to sort through (particularly the delicates). There were a handful of photos, ostensibly from her childhood, and kitschy keepsakes of (he assumed) sentimental value. Very little of monetary worth, even less of relevance.

Though the black leather jumpsuit had intrigued him.

He had imagined her skulking around in it, tumbling around lasers, rappelling down the sides of mansions. He had imagined running into her while on patrol back when he had been a uniform, a black cat slinking out of the shadows, beautiful and suspicious to his vigilant eye. When he had realized he was fantasizing, and that the fantasy was disturbingly satisfying, he had made a quick, objective examination of the utility belt and then buried the suit at the bottom of the valise, out of sight.

She stuffs the displaced items into the suitcase and zips it closed, ripping off the evidence tag and tossing it onto his floor. "Thanks for holding on to it for me." He suspects that she often tries to gain the upper hand in conversations by convincing the other party that for whatever reason they ought to be ashamed of themselves and this is what her tone has just implied.

He's an easy victim for this manipulation, painfully aware of the fact that however selfless his original intentions had been, he had spent, perhaps, a _little _too long looking through her possessions. Not fingering her lacy bras (and they _were_ lacy), but studying the smiling little girl in the photo taken near a merry-go-round, and browsing the faded book of Maya Angelou poetry (it has a personal inscription from her mother), delighting in the stuffed pink plush bunny, and unraveling the mysteries of an ancient charm bracelet that he had pictured on her adolescent wrist. The crudely molded horse charm was the first he had noticed. She still loves horses - she had been accused of stealing a crystal figurine of an Arabian (amongst other, more valuable things). It was the only item from the robbery that had not been fenced.

She'd kept it.

But Selina's attempt at the upper hand fails when he glances around his apartment and notices just the slightest of irregularities.

She has touched things.

He can almost see the delicate, curious fingerprints.

It hasn't exactly been his habit to dust, so it's easy for him to discern which photographs she has picked up, which books she has pulled out. There's a thumbprint in the dust of the framed group photo from the year he arrived at St. Swithins. Another on his parents' wedding photo. There's not much else in the room that isn't of a utilitarian nature, and it dawns on him that what she didn't see is far more telling than what she did see. He continues to scan meticulously, and his eyes land on his book shelf.

"That yearbook photo from your junior year – truly awful," she remarks, noting his realization, and making her best show of being not even a little embarrassed about having nosed through his stuff.

"Bad hair day," he replies.

"Is that what was on top of your head? Hair?"

He hasn't exactly warmed up to her, but her teasing seems so good-humored that he can't help but smile. "It was long that year."

"Not a good look for you."

"It was in back then."

"'In' isn't always 'win'," she informs him.

"I'll try to remember that." Blake strolls over to the door which he had shut behind him when he first entered, and opens it widely, inviting her to leave. She shrugs, not betraying the fact that she's slightly miffed at her dismissal, and she stoops to pick up a linen sack from behind his couch. He narrows his eyes suspiciously; it's not a purse, and it wasn't among her catalogued things from the airport. He slams his arm across the doorway before she can cross the threshold and seizes the bag from her. She doesn't resist, letting go of it with a heavy exhale.

There's not much of value in his apartment, but he can think of a few things he doesn't want her walking off with.

"A girl's gotta-" she begins explicatively.

"A girl's gotta eat," he finishes unsympathetically. "Yeah, I know." But then he opens up the sack.

"Literally," she replies.

It's full of food. Food stolen from his apartment, but food nonetheless.

He hands the bag back to her and looks her in the eyes. "Do you need more?"

Selina shakes her head with a confident smile. "I can get more if I need to. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle your diet." She draws attention to the bag by lifting it slightly. It's snack foods, mostly. Individually wrapped non perishables. Instant cuisine. "You eat a lot of cereal, don't you?" she jests.

He smiles at that, slightly abashed, and pulls on his earlobe. "Breakfast of champions."

"And lunch of champions. And dinner."

"Not all of us have wealthy men taking us out for lobster three times a week."

"I prefer steak," she replies, rolling the word over her lips.

"Is that what you were doing with Bruce Wayne? Getting fed?"

Selina frowns. The reminder of Bruce is unpleasant enough, like a blow to the chest, but Blake reassuming his police mantle in the middle of their playful exchange vexes her. "Bruce knew exactly what I was within seconds of first meeting me," she answers sharply. "His mistake was in thinking that I could ever be anything else."

Blake doesn't know if she's intentionally trying to warn him, but he fears making the same mistake that Bruce did so he takes up his position behind the door again and is about to shut it on her retreating form when she blocks it suddenly with her suitcase. "Meet me at the west side entrance of the Hart Tower tomorrow morning at 1l:00 AM," she instructs him. "Wear comfortable shoes and bring a flashlight. Be there on time, Blake – I won't wait."

And then she's gone.


	3. Chapter 3 A City This Big

CHAPTER THREE – A CITY THIS BIG SHOULDN'T BE THIS QUIET

Curiosity gets the better of him and he goes to meet her (despite his numerous and significant reservations, and the absolutely nagging feeling that he ought to know better); comfortable shoes on his feet as per her instruction, a powerful flashlight tucked into the pocket of his coat, and his gun fully loaded.

Silence taunts him in the eerily deserted streets.

As disheartening as it is to see the playgrounds empty on a sunny day (even though the autumn weather is chillier than usual), and to see citizens peeking through their curtains in only the briefest of spurts because they're terrified to step out their doors, he's relieved that people still aren't leaving their homes. He has a desire to lock them all up, as if he can protect them that way. As if they're any safer in their homes.

It has only been 9 days since Bane's stunt at the football stadium: the people are not restless yet, not hungry. Fear weakens over time, even if the threat does not. They'll venture out, and it will bring disaster. They'll put themselves in danger; or worse: they'll join the new order. Already it was more than just escaped inmates from Blackgate who were delivering Gotham's wealthy to Bane's kangaroo court, and looting, and living in stolen homes. Blake hadn't wanted to believe that anyone would willingly join the ranks of a man who held a bomb over their heads, who threatened to blow up an entire city with everyone still in it – not just billionaires and socialites and cops, but kids and grandparents and pretty girls – but Gordon had said that Gotham was a city of survivors, and survivors were adaptable; that the Batman's greatest mission had always been to protect the city from themselves, to inspire the better angels of their nature.

Gordon was always full of dark words, but his actions painted a man who didn't know what it was to give up; and Blake wasn't the type to wallow in despair either.

He has not fooled himself into believing that going to meet Selina Kyle has anything to do with saving Gotham, but as his feet carry him towards her, he does wonder about the things she knows, and whether they might help. Vehicles draw attention – it's assumed that anyone traveling so far that they need a car to get there is "up to something" – so he is walking to the Hart Tower. One of the new-fangled tanks driven by Bane's mercenaries passes by, and as a precaution Blake ducks into an alley until it's out of sight.

It's against his nature not to do anything, to let the enemy roll by unscathed, but Gordon has insisted that they need more intelligence before they make even the smallest of moves. Blake isn't tempted to interfere, 20 minutes later, when one of the bomb convoys cruises past. He feels the menace of the bomb in his gut, tendrils of horror reaching out from the WMD and suffocating him.

After 45 minutes of brisk walking from the apartment in uptown where he and Gordon have been holed up, Blake arrives 30 minutes early for his 11:00 AM deadline. He peers out cautiously at the west side entrance from behind a parked car, scanning the area. It's absent her, or anyone else, and he can say for sure after clearing a 30-foot radius of the door that there's no band of mercenaries lying in wait for him. Half his mind reasons that if Selina Kyle had wanted to kill him she could have done it the day before when she had a gun to the back of his head, but he still doesn't trust her. She knows that he knew Bruce Wayne, that he knows Commissioner Gordon – it's possible that she thinks he's far more important than he is; it's possible she thinks handing him over will earn her favors of some kind with Bane's regime. He's no one, he's anyone – but that might not be her impression, even if she has seen his yearbook photo from 11th grade.

Without the traffic he can hear the sloshing of the river nearby, and the cooing of pigeons at least two blocks away. He doesn't like it: a city this big shouldn't be this quiet.

He waits at the corner behind a closed magazine kiosk until he sees her stroll up the front stairs and enter the skyscraper - right on time, alone, and deceptively innocuous-looking. He ignores the excitement in his chest just at seeing her, and chases to join her in the lobby.

"You showed up," she remarks, looking him over.

Blake shrugs. "I think you were pretty sure I would come." He resents the way she hooked him with her cryptic invite, but he won't deny it was effective.

She chews that over with a nod, and he glances around. The lobby is dark and deserted. He had expected to see some squatters in the ritzy, unlocked office building; but then he supposes that most of the homeless have swarmed the hotels.

"What are we doing here?" he demands evenly, donning the demeanor of a man too cool to be angry but too important to be jerked around. She's carrying a giant case over her shoulder, the size of a cello or tuba, but he can tell it's not a musical instrument from the shape (though he spends half a second amusing himself at the idea of a concert).

"You'll see," she replies evasively.

He glares, but doesn't press. Girls like Selina need to do things their own way.

"We're going up to the roof," she continues graciously. "There's no power in this neighborhood, which means no elevator." She kicks his tennis shoe, and he understands now why she had told him to dress comfortably. Selina hands him the case. "You'll be carrying this," she informs, before taking off, unencumbered, in the direction of the stairwell.

He's starting to wonder if she invited him just to be her pack mule as he throws the burden over his shoulder. It's heavy and unbalanced and awkward as hell to carry, but when he asks her what's inside, "Don't drop it," is all she answers.

It's his perception that Selina has a particular sense of fairness that isn't _entirely_ out of accord with his own, so he does carry it, assuming, perhaps wrongly, that in the end it'll have been a fair exchange for a service rendered by her.

The stairwell is windowless, and therefore pitch black. Selina shines a flashlight in his face. "You aren't afraid of the dark, are you, Blake?"

"It's the roof I'm worried about."

"Afraid of heights?"

"Afraid of you."

He must not sound like he means it, because she laughs. Her real laugh is quiet and breathy and she rewards him with it randomly, as if she's afraid to be real for more than a few seconds at a time.

"But I suppose you need me to help you carry this back down," he reasons.

She turns her back on him and begins climbing the stairs. "Actually, I plan on leaving it up there."

Shaking his head, Blake follows.

Her steps are light and graceful; even in the noiseless vacuum of the stairwell he can barely hear her footfalls. But she's sure and steady. He's heavy-footed and plodding, clinging to the railing, anxious the weight of the case will pull him backwards. Once he develops a rhythm the flashlight is no longer necessary, but he appreciates the view of her. She is dressed for aerobics or Yoga - spandex with a windbreaker thrown over – perhaps it's her less-conspicuous, daytime catsuit. She removes the jacket and ties it around her waist after the sixth flight, to his disappointment.

He's winded after seven floors, but makes a concentrated effort to hide his labored breathing until they pass the eleventh. He's got the excuse of the cumbersome case, but still has the feeling that he's lost a competition, because her breathing is as silent as her feet like she's some kind of stair-climbing machine. Her scanty and close-fitting outfit gives away exactly how good of shape she's in; the muscles are subtle but defined under her taut skin. Still, he's impressed.

They don't speak, but there's a certain camaraderie in the unpleasant endeavor of the stairs. Suffering is binding. The seclusion unites them further: although there are people down on the street, and in the buildings that surround the Hart Tower, he and Selina are more alone that it's usually possible to be in Gotham. In a way he can almost sense their solitude: the invisible, matterless antennae that stretch out from a person, detecting in the space around them the warmth of others; the danger of others; the beating hearts that could bring succor or ruin – his sense only her. Her warmth. Her beating heart. Her hazards.

"Breathe, Blake," she chuckles cruelly, though he can begin to hear the strain on her lungs. Three flights later, on the small platform at the base of the 25th floor, he trudges into her hand, which she has held out to stop him. "Break time."

And it's a good thing, too, because he's starting to see spots.

Dropping down, she takes a seat on the first step of the next flight, and turns off her flashlight. He plops down beside and beneath her and leans against the door that leads out into the hallway of Floor 25. He switches his flashlight off as well, too exhausted even to hold it.

His shock is palpable when he feels something against his lips, but then he realizes she is handing him a small water bottle. The exhilaration rocketing through him falls and dies.

"Drink it all, I've got more," she assures him, so he tries not to gulp it down all at once while he debates interrogating her again about the purpose of this misery. He doesn't know what's in the case, or what's on the roof, or why this building and not one a few blocks over with a working elevator – he can't even begin to guess. He had not dare hope, when he left the apartment earlier that morning, that she was leading him to Bruce, or to an escape route off the island, or to a way of freeing the police that were trapped in the tunnels. But the now near-certainty that this venture is none of those things is beginning to make him second-guess having come at all.

He finds that the continued silence between them isn't uncomfortable, despite his misgivings. It doesn't oppress them, as it sometimes can. He doesn't feel the _need_ to speak when he does eventually start-up a conversation, having gained back his air: "You didn't happen to see a cat while you were at my apartment yesterday, did you?"

In the dark he can't see her reaction.

"I hadn't been back there this whole week, you know," he adds, eager to appear less foolish in her eyes. Returning to his apartment so soon had not been smart.

"You left your pet cat alone for a whole week?" she asks with censure.

"No," he replies quickly. "She's not _mine_. Just a stray. She's wily, she can get inside. I put out a little food for her from time to time. And I took her to the vet once. She had been in some sort of brawl."

"She sounds feisty."

"Yes. She scratches. Bites. You've got to know _where_ to pet her. Go for her belly and you'll lose an eye. But there's a spot on her neck; she tolerates being touched there. Likes it, even. Once you've found it you're her friend forever. But that's the way with guarded creatures, isn't it? Earning their loyalty is like playing with fire."

"I never saw her," is all Selina says in response, quiet and alert.

"I noticed some of my CDs missing as well. I'm assuming you did see _them_. Saw them and _took_ them."

"Maybe you were robbed," she suggests. "By someone other than me, I mean. There was so little of worth in your apartment, I just assumed someone else had been there first. This is a lawless town."

He ignores the insults. "It's all right, Miss Kyle. I'm not going to arrest you. Least of all for having good taste in music."

He can't see her shrug, but he feels the wind of it, hears the rustle of her clothing. "CD's are a thing of the past, anyway, Blake. It's time to update. And my need was far greater than yours. My roommate, Jen - you must have met her when you inevitably searched my place – "(and Selina knows quite well that Blake _has_ met Jen and _had_ inspected their apartment, she had discussed it with her friend from behind a mask of disinterest), "Well, she has an…_over_-fondness for the songs of Katy Perry. I just couldn't listen to 'Waking Up In Vegas' one more time. In fact, I'm afraid I _might_ have thrown her Katy Perry CD out the window. It didn't survive. That's another problem with CD's, Blake: _they're so fragile_. We are staying in a penthouse, though," she adds lightly. "It's quite a drop."

Blake laughs. "That'd do it."

He did remember Jen – pretty, blonde, unremarkable. Sweet, though, and very protective of Selina, even if it was obvious she knew nothing of substance where Bruce Wayne or Bane or the kidnapping of the congressman were concerned. Selina had effectively moved out of her apartment; what she had left behind had been impersonal and lacking in secrets, and more or less donated to Jen. Blake assumed Selina had mailed off everything that wasn't going on the plane with her. A good thief had P.O. boxes and storage lockers and safety deposit boxes all over the country. Her ticket had been to Los Angeles, the complete opposite of Gotham while still being the perfect place to ply her trade, and so close to Mexico at the same time. He imagined she had a P.O. box there, and inside of it there was a package full of Rolexes and rubies, enough to set her up in a new place. It was a wonder she didn't hate him for catching her at the airport, sending her to prison, dooming her to this place when she could have had that place.

"You've upgraded," he says, in reference to the penthouse.

She doesn't miss the note of admonition. "Staying off the radar means doing what everyone else is doing."

"It's someone's home," he replies, just a hint of righteous anger detectable in his tone.

Her exact words to Jen. She swallows. "I know."

They rest for a few minutes more, and then tackle the final 15 floors. His lungs are on fire when he bursts through the door that exits out onto the roof. He sets the case down gently, mindful of its fragility even in his exhaustion, and then collapses down onto his back and stares up at the sky. He did not take much time to glance around, but nothing unusual had stood out. It's all still a mystery.

Selina lies down beside him after propping open the roof door, almost as tired as he is. 40 stories worth of stairs will take it out of anyone. They pant in unison, and enjoy the sunshine after the unbearable darkness of the stairwell. The pleasurable flood of sensations makes him forget his troubles and for the flash of an instant they could be anyone anywhere.

She rolls her head towards him and looks at him for a moment. "Not every man could match me step for step the way you did," she compliments, sincerely impressed. "I have to give credit where credit is due."

"What the hell are we doing up here?" Blake demands impatiently, though secretly pleased.

Selina stands. "Get up, Blake." She marches over to the northeastern edge and points to a spot across the river.

The Palisades. He squints, and realizes he can almost make out Wayne Manor.

She indicates the case with a toss of her head. "It's a telescope. A powerful one."

While she sets it up he begins to understand. The Hart Tower is an unexceptional building in almost every way, but its roof does provide the best vantage point on the entire island for Wayne Manor. It's posed on the river, in the northernmost point, rising far above any visual obstructions without forcing them up into the troposphere.

"I don't know," she begins, frowning while she calibrates the apparatus. "I guess I just thought that if he's alive, and free, he would return there at some point." Her tone is overly defensive, and Blake feels of a swell of affection for her when he realizes it's because she is embarrassed to be nursing even the slightest amount of hope that Bruce is still alive. "I'm not saying we'd see him, but maybe the curtains will be drawn when they were closed before, or we'll see a car parked out front. If it was just Bruce Wayne, I'd assume he was dead…" Selina has started the sentence before she remembers that Blake might not know about Bruce's alter ego. Even though it likely does not even matter any more, she's wary of revealing the secret.

But Blake finishes the sentence for her, unsure up until that exact moment whether or not _she_ had known: "…But the Batman just might make it."

Her large eyes settle on him, soft for just a second, and she nods.

That was why heroes were heroes: they did what no one else could do. They lived when no one else would have, fought when everyone else was done. And Selina remembers: the Batman's body had broken before his spirit.

Blake knows that there's no one living in Wayne Manor or likely to go there. All the staff were laid off when Bruce lost his fortune, and the only other resident, Alfred Pennyworth, the butler, had flown to London. It's possible they might be able to notice heralds of Bruce's return.

If Bruce is still alive.

Selina lets Blake peer through the eyepiece while she leans against a giant nearby vent. It's about the size of a bus, blocking them from the whipping wind in an almost friendly way. She watches him for a few minutes, admiring his concentration. There's something so clean and solid about him. When she begins thinking about his good qualities it's like a warm balloon inflating in her chest, and she doesn't like it. When he had come to visit her in the prison, she'd had a great desire to rip his tie off with her teeth. That was OK. This is different.

She sighs. "Daggett hired me to steal Bruce Wayne's fingerprints a few weeks ago."

Blake turns sharply to look at her. _Finally. _The story. The truth. He turns back to the ocular to make it easier for her to tell it.

"You make one deal with these people and then there's no getting out. I'm not saying I missed my calling as an insurance investigator or white collar taskforce agent, but I never actually wanted to be a thief." She sighs again, the weight of a misspent decade heavy on her shoulders. "One of Daggett's companies had been involved with a piece of technology called the Clean Slate. It was a program that was supposed to be able to wipe a person's identity clean. I could start over somewhere new, with no digital trail of my…_questionable_ past." She laughs bitterly. "I should have known, Blake. There's no such thing as a clean start, and Gotham never lets go."

He moves so say something, but she interrupts: "Don't feel sorry for me. You haven't heard the rest."

He shifts the scope to examine another part of the house, and she continues: "That was the trade: the fingerprints for the Clean Slate. What did I care about Bruce Wayne? So I pretended to be a caterer at that benefit for the Dent Act. I'm sure the congressman told you all of this."

"He said you drugged his drink."

Selina rolls her eyes. "I did drug his drink. But not until _after_ we'd left the event together. I'm sure he kept that little detail to himself."

Grinning, Blake nods. He had always suspected that the only reason the congressman was pressing charges was so that he didn't have to admit to his wife and the press that he had left with Selina freely. His description to the police had involved a lot of talk about her legs and a surprising lack of resentment.

"I delivered Bruce's dinner up to his _wing_, or whatever. I lifted the prints off of his safe and took some pearls while I was at it, but he came in the room before I got out. He recognized the pearls right away."

Blake smiled to himself. The scenario reminded him of the silly fantasies he had begun to concoct about her; Bruce Wayne had actually _lived_ them.

"I never should have put them on, but…" she doesn't finish. The memory, tainted as it was by how it all had ended, runs through her pleasantly nevertheless, and she's distracted for a brief moment in trying to desperately recall every detail. "I got away without a problem, of course. But he found me. I was at a fundraiser with a mark – some environmental thing. (The food was incredible.) He was like a new man: clean-shaven, reinvigorated. We danced."

She's quiet for a moment. She and Bruce had only spoken for a few minutes at that party, but the interaction had been so much more than just the words they had said. It had been the energy between them, and the feel of his arms around her, and the pressure of his lips, and the smell of his skin, and she still remembered all those sensations like pinpricks.

Blake swallows. He tells himself it's not jealousy.

"I kissed him," she says. "It was just a distraction – I stole his valet ticket. I like nice cars. Still, I did kiss him." There was a million other ways she could have drawn his attention away from her sleight of hand. She knows this, so did Bruce, so does Blake.

When she looks back at Blake he's staring at her. "I don't need to know _everything_," he says.

But Selina feels the need to tell him everything. There's a full-disclosure imperative bearing down on her and she doesn't quite understand it but she doesn't fight it. The idea of not having any secrets from Blake is a tempting one.

"I told him I did more for this city than he did." She can't even laugh about that. "I thought he didn't know me. But I didn't know him…Then he took the pearls back," she tells him, smiling again. "I'm sure they're in there, somewhere." She looks towards the manor, and then switches places with Blake and puts her eye to the telescope. "Probably not in the safe, though."

"You wore them to the party?" he asks.

"I liked them." She pauses. "I hope he had time to update his will. I bet he left them to me, or he would have. He was magnanimous like that."

Even as she looks at his house through the telescope she is speaking about Bruce as if he were dead, and Blake feels the shift like a gust of wind. He had spent what seemed like his entire life admiring Bruce Wayne – the billionaire orphan, the noble Batman. Blake had connected with him connected those few times they had met. He felt the loss keenly, as more than just a citizen of Gotham once again needing to be saved. His hero was fallen, and his friend.

"The house is dark. Lifeless."

"Just remember the details," she replies. "So we can compare later."

"What happened then?"

"A couple of days later he came to my apartment."

"I remember. I drove him there. If only he had taken a taxi, then I never would have staked out your apartment and caught you."

Selina doesn't find this hypothetical amusing. She ignores it. "He said he could get me the real Clean Slate program if I took his friend the Batman to Bane's location. Well, I needed my life more than I needed the Clean Slate, and Bane considered the Batman a fair trade."

Taking a deep breath, she turns her back on Blake completely and looks out at the hushed city. She doesn't make apologies, but she also doesn't want to watch his reactions to this part of the narrative. She doesn't want to know what betrayal looks like on John Blake's boyish face.

"You don't know how deep I was in with them, Blake. Bane was going to kill me because I wasn't some loyal brainwashed true believer like the rest of those nutjobs that work for him. I'd done my task, they didn't need me anymore and I knew too much. The Clean Slate was an illusion, just like the idea that I could ever get away. So I delivered Batman. I took him to Bane just like he wanted, but Bane knew he was coming. And I watched as Bane beat him, brutally, relentlessly, and called him Bruce, and broke his back. And then I left. And that's what I know, Blake. That's what I know and that's what I saw. Bane spoke about something called the League of Shadows, and a man named Ra's Al Ghul. Some destiny crap and a whole lot of rhetoric about darkness and who was the bigger badass. But he didn't kill him. Not while I was there. He wanted to see him break."

A shudder racks through her. He's soundless behind her, a still man in a still city. She wants him to see how shaken she is and to know that it's out of guilt.

"Would you still have done it? If you had known that it was Bruce?" he asks quietly after a long pause.

She knows how little the difference makes to Blake: she had found a Batman scrapbook on his book shelf, lovingly full of yellowing newspaper clippings, online printouts, and glossy magazine articles. The Batman meant a lot to him, Bruce Wayne or no.

She gathers her courage and turns around to face Blake. There's a fury in his eyes but his body is plagued with a contradictory resignation.

"I don't know," she whispers. And she thinks she wouldn't have, but she can't be sure.

He stares at her. "It's a long way down. I had better get started." He turns towards the door to the stairwell and starts walking towards it.

"Wait. There's another way down."

"You're going to push me over the edge now?" he asks. No hint of a smile.

"It _would_ be faster."

"I'll take the slow way, if it's all the same to you." He resumes walking. And for a second she's afraid he'll take the prop out of the door so that it locks behind him and leave her stranded up there but he doesn't.

He's lonely as he jogs madly down the dark and silent stairs, and takes some satisfaction in the thought that she will be lonely too. He hears the roof door slam shut after a few minutes, but isn't surprised that she never catches up. He is surprised, however, when he emerges into the lobby to see her standing there.

She holds out a hot dog to him, pointing through the windows to a stand across the street that has opened for lunch. A line wraps around the block. "Only hot dog stand in the city still open for business, as far as I know," she informs him. He takes the hot dog – it smells amazing. "The buns are stale, but what do you expect? Even a year's salary wouldn't get you fresh buns, and that's practically what I paid for these. Of course it was stolen money. Are you all right eating a hot dog bought with dirty money, Detective? It could be worse, though, right? At least the hot dog isn't stolen."

"How'd you beat me to the ground?"

"I told you there was another way down."

"Why didn't you make me wait?"

"You seemed like you were in a bad mood." She swirls around and heads for the doors. "I don't need you judging me, John Blake."

He runs to catch up. "Thanks for the frank."

"It's the least a girl could do after raiding your cupboards and depriving you of all of your Cup-o-Noodles."

"If you're making amends, you might want to start elsewhere."

"I don't make amends." She doesn't slow until she reaches a bench in front of the river. He sits down beside her and they greedily consume their food, including every last bite of the stale bun.

It's all rather too pleasant: the soft croon of the river, the gentle breeze stirring her hair, the sun on his head, and the insignificant space between them on the bench. He has to remind himself of what she had done.

But she is worrying where the silence will take his thoughts and speaks: "I cabled down the elevator shaft. Elevator #6 was on the first floor when the power went out. So I just put on the harness and dropped right on down the shaft to the second floor. Now that it's all set up, we can cable up next time."

"Next time? You really think he might still be alive?"

She can't stand the skepticism in his voice. She can't be the hopeful one - it has to be him. "He got his ass handed to him," Selina replies gravely. "He might not have survived those injuries, even if Bane didn't outright slit his throat. But he's the Batman. There's a chance."

"If a chance is all I've got then I'll take it."

He leaves a few minutes later but first they make a plan to visit the telescope again in two weeks. He's lackadaisical in his agreement and she thinks there's a chance he won't show. She's tempted to trail him until he returns to wherever he's staying just so that she knows how to find him, because the idea of not being able to find him at will is acutely and unfamiliarly vexing, but she spends enough time trying to talk herself out of it that he disappears and the opportunity is gone.


	4. Chapter 4 A Girl's Gotta Eat

CHAPTER 4 – A GIRL'S GOTTA EAT

She's right when two weeks later he misses their rendezvous.

Misses, or skips, or _misses_…

Half of her is worried he's dead, and it's the sort of worry that makes you feel like you're hanging off of a ledge. Like there is a vacuum in your chest. The sort of worry that makes everything else pale in comparison.

She hangs around in the lobby. 11:05. 11:10. 11:15. 11:20. If he does show up, she'll have to pretend to be irritated by his lateness – she knows all she'll feel is relief.

She depersonalizes her anxiousness: John Blake is nothing to her. He's just the idea that something good could flourish in this shithole of a city. He's the placeholder - the representation - for the people that could be in her life but aren't. And his loss is nothing more than the loss of those things.

After all, she hardly knows him…(She ignores something in the back of her mind telling her that she already knows him about as well as he ever lets anyone get to know him, and telling her that she already cares about him as much as she ever lets herself care about anyone. Of course, in either case, that doesn't amount to much.)

She figures all of these…_feelings_ are a mix of projections and associations. Because she can deny a lot of things, but at this point, with this sort of nauseating nervousness in her stomach, and taking into consideration the fact that it's 11:40 and she's still waiting, she really can't deny that there are…_feelings_ involved.

Being cerebral about it gives her back some control, and she allows her other half - which is confident that he has _chosen_ not to come - to take over. She's pissed, because it's not like he's got anything better to do in this brokedown town, and probably also – _a little_ – because she had been looking forward to seeing him. Not _giddy_; but she's growing tired of the company of Jen and her low-life friends and her interactions with Blake – while many things – have yet to be _boring_. Selina's used to a certain element of excitement in her life, and though she's choosing to steer clear of actual danger, she would not be adverse to the playful kind.

She has an inkling that his decision not to come might be correlated with the fact that she had stolen his gun the last time they had been together.

Oops.

But it had seemed like a fair trade for the hot dog (the perfect distraction), and cops always have another in an ankle holster. One of the guys in Jen's crowd had taken her pistol while she had been sleeping; she usually kept it under her pillow but after reacquiring her possessions from Blake she had decided to keep other things close to her that night. It had been almost out of bullets anyway, and too small to be intimidating the way she needed her weapon to be. All of the stores and armories in the city had been raided (including the police precincts); the streets were flooded with guns and munitions, but Selina had been keeping off the streets the best she could, so she had to make do with those resources available to her. There was no way, even with her hand-to-hand combat skills, that she was going to be unarmed. She had needed a gun. It had occurred to her that day just to ask him for it, but with what he probably thinks of her now, she doubts he would have given it to her.

She likes the feel of Blake's gun. Not too heavy, not too big, but powerful. The police department had chosen well. Her hand often finds it in her pocket when she's unsure about her safety, she slides her fingers along the engraved serial number and she thinks about how it's registered to him.

There's still no power on the block; she cables up to the 40th floor and then takes the final two flights of stairs up to the roof. The telescope is packed away in the case just the way she left it, tucked into the corner and covered by a thin tarp. But when she opens the case she knows she wasn't the last to touch the pieces – she never would have arranged them like that. There's a _method_.

Her first thought is that she hopes he took the stairs, because the stupid kid probably doesn't know how to handle her climbing equipment and could have ended up free-falling 39 floors to a splattery death.

She's dizzy with relief as she reassembles the telescope. She considers the possibility that he or even she had been tailed the last time, but it's far more likely that Blake had come back without her, perhaps more than once.

She knows Blake's type, how restless they tend to be. She had thought that if he was spying on Wayne Manor he wouldn't be knocking on City Hall trying to get at Bane. He's smarter than that, but good men do desperate deeds when they feel like there's no hope and nothing else they can do. So she had given him hope, and something to do with his idle and restless hands. And maybe she had given it to herself, too.

There are no changes to Wayne Manor, except that the grass is a little overgrown and there are less leaves on the trees. She had noted before that the curtain of the second window from the right on the third floor had been hooked on a candle sitting on the pane; it still is. The decorative door knocker, rusted, had hung an inch or so away from the plate; it still does.

As she puts the telescope away, she notices a note with an address on it buried at the bottom of the case. Underneath the address Blake has added in careful and austere penmanship, "A girl's gotta eat." It can only be from him, and she realizes as she treks to the unknown location that she trusts him completely because it never crosses her mind not to go, or to wonder what his motivation is, or whether he will expect something in return.

Down on the street she peers around for him, thinking there's a chance he has come late, or come only to spy on her.

"Don't be shy," she calls out, challenging and coquettish. She remembers too late that that's exactly what she had said to the Batman – to _Bruce_ - before delivering him to Bane.

If Blake is there, he doesn't respond. She clutches the note and heads west.

He has led her to a supermarket like any other, except that it's right off Gotham Bridge. A semi with "Emergency Relief" painted on the side is parked against the curb, and out of the back a man tosses parcels to a small crowd. Selina throws herself in with the others, and walks away a few minutes later with eight military Meals Ready to Eat and some cans of fruit. It's not dinner at the Ritz but it'll tide her and Jen over for a few days, and it's an improvement over their diet of stale crackers, pepperoni, and raisins. After only three weeks it is already down to that; six million people consume an astonishing quantity of food in that amount of time, and when they don't know where the next meal is coming from they aren't usually in the mood to share.

The government is painfully slow in working out a deal with Bane and establishing a system of humanitarian aid; but after another week of returning to that grocery store to keep herself and Jen fed, Selina is able to get their rations closer to the 50-storey apartment building in uptown where they have settled. When Jen asks how she knew where to go for the shipments, Selina can only shrug and say that a little bird told her.

She doesn't write a note back to him to thank him, because she wants to thank him in person. It's more that she wants to not say thank you, and for him to simply see the begrudging gratitude on her face.

She wonders how he knew where the deliveries would be, and decides it's better that she doesn't know. Whatever he's in, she doesn't want any part of it. It's a good reason to stay away from him. Being killed trying to save Gotham isn't on her list of things to do; being killed because someone was under the mistaken impression that she was trying to save Gotham is even further from her priorities. It was hazardous enough when he was just an obsolete cop; it's obvious now that he's actively involved in a resistance of sorts and if people are going to end up dead she's not going to be among them just because she feels a certain misguided loyalty towards some noble-hearted sucker with intense eyes that she got tangled up with.

Still, she checks out Wayne Manor three more times over the next six weeks (it remains undisturbed), and the lack of communication from him pecks at her. She can't tell if he has been back to the roof: he's either mastered the art of packing up the telescope or he has stayed away.

Or he's dead.

Really, he could drop her a fucking note just to tell her he's still breathing. She always leaves behind a few wrappers from whatever over-sugared, individually-wrapped non-perishable she's using to meet her caloric needs, and he's a detective so that should be enough for him to know she's still kicking it. It's just _courtesy._


	5. Chapter 5 Attracting Factors

CHAPTER FIVE – ATTRACTING FACTORS

It's Thanksgiving.

Somehow the holiday hasn't been lost to the two and a half months of Bane's _allegedly_ populist-driven anarchic reign.

Despite having seen a few turkeys in windows, Selina had still been surprised when Jen began setting aside a little food each day so that they could have a big meal to celebrate.

"I'm not feeling very grateful," Selina had said.

Jen had frowned at Selina's attitude. "It's not just about that. It's about being together."

Selina couldn't honestly reply to that without hurting Jen's feelings, so she had kept her mouth shut.

Still, when the day rolls around, and Jen has set out a small feast for the two of them and a handful of additional close friends, Selina feels a stirring of tenderness about the whole thing. There isn't a single traditional dish on the table, but there's enough food that they can all eat until they're full, which isn't something they've been able to do since the Occupation first began. And Jen's friends might not be _her_ friends, but she's glad Jen has her lot. She feels a certain responsibility towards her roommate that her own independent nature has trouble accommodating. She has always warned the girl that at any moment she might up and go (and she would have done, if John Blake hadn't arrested her on her way out of town). At least this way she knows Jen won't be on her own when that day comes. (Even if that crew does play a little too much beer pong to be considered edifying companionship.)

Before too long the gathering inevitably begins to stifle her. She doesn't fit in with them, and that's a stifling sort of thing. They're being rowdy; any other night and she would lay down the law because it's her place now and that's her right, but they're having fun in a time with so little of it, so she throws on her coat and takes to the street.

It's cold, even for nighttime in late November. She turns up her collar against the wind and strolls leisurely down the uptown avenue. It's a new moon, and with blackouts in a third of the city she can actually make out a few stars for once. With her eyes turned to the sky she doesn't notice the silhouette slink out in front of her.

"Give me all your food!"

Selina has her hand on Blake's gun, firm and reassuring in her pocket, before the sentence is finished, but it's a child that has spoken, and she relaxes her grip.

"I don't have any food with me," she responds measuredly. "People don't just carry food around, kid."

She perceives figures moving in the shadows, and at least three others eventually show themselves on the sidewalk. The leader, and she guesses he's about 13, levels the barrel of a shotgun on her. "Well we need to eat. And this gun makes our problem your problem."

"You're messing with the wrong pedestrian," she warns with a curt laugh, but she would rather help them than fight them. If they knew what she usually did to guys who tried to mug her they would be hiding right now.

"Oh yeah?"

He's not very good at this. Selina sighs. "You're going about this the wrong way. Where are your parents?"

"Don't need parents," another one of the kids says, this time a girl. She's got a large knife that catches the streetlight, though Selina can tell it belongs in a household kitchen.

Selina lifts her hands defensively. "Hey, I get it. Believe me. So you're on your own. They've got shelters. The churches-"

"We're not going to a shelter," she responds.

"Well have you at least got somewhere inside to stay? It's almost winter. Some of these condos are empty."

"We've got a place," the head boy answers. "We just need food."

Selina tells them about the food drops, but they already know. "It's them," the girl explains. She points into an alley where two much younger boys are hiding behind an overflowing dumpster. "They just showed up. We already ate our rations – Thanksgiving dinner and all that. We can make it until the next distribution but we don't have anything for them and they're already skinny as hell."

Selina approaches the alley slowly. The others have lowered their weapons – apparently they've decided to trust her or at least figured out that they can't intimidate her – but these two are more skittish. She estimates one to be about 6, but the other can't be more than three - dirty faces swimming in clothes four times too large.

"Where did they come from?"

"I think they might have been in the Lexington fire," the girl says, and Selina knows exactly what she's referring to: Lexington Heights, one of the tenements near the warehouse district that had burned down two days earlier. "We put some of our clothes on them because all they were only wearing pajamas, and they smelled like smoke. I've been wondering if, maybe, their parents died in the fire." She whispers the last part, respectful of its gloom.

Selina gestures for the two little boys to come to her after having stood there benignly for a moment, and to her surprise, they eagerly do. She assumes that it's probably just because she's an adult, and she sighs over how much they have left to learn. She lifts the younger one into her arms, and grabs the other by the hand. "I'll take them," she tells the rest of the group.

Shotgun takes a suspicious step towards her.

Selina rolls her eyes. "What do you think I'm going to do? Throw them in the river? I'm going to take them to a shelter. You guys want to be on your own? Fine. I get it. I've been there. But these two need to be taken care of 24/7 by experienced adults. You've done a good job – trying to feed them, giving them clothes. But you don't want to responsible for them from now on, do you?" She paused rhetorically. "You're welcome." She stops in front of front of the boy with the shotgun. "Do you know who people want to help? Starving kids. Do you know who people don't want to help? Punks who stick guns in their faces."

The posse makes no further protests, though the girl comes over to say goodbye to the little boys.

Selina can't get the eldest boy to say a word, and the younger won't shut up but none of what he says is intelligible. She guesses they might be from a Hispanic family, so she tries out her rudimentary Spanish (wincing when she remembers Bruce correcting her pronunciation), but it has no effect.

She knows of shelters that are closer but she heads for St. Swithins. She thinks of the framed picture in Blake's apartment. These kids might be happy there.

She tries to make the little one walk after she loses feeling her arms, but he falls down about every six steps and moves only slightly faster than a slug. They pass by a Target store and she's about to break in and steal a stroller when she realizes that might not be the best lesson to teach them, even if it's obvious from all the broken windows that it's more or less a retailer free-for-all.

It feels like half the night has gone by when they finally arrive at the front door of the orphanage, but it's bright and lively inside so she figures it can't be too late. She buzzes, and the door is opened a few inches to her by a priest, three large men standing protectively behind him.

_Good_, she thinks. _They're not completely stupid._

"Yes?" He takes in the sight.

"You in charge?" Selina asks, rubbing life back into her limp arm.

"Yes. I'm Father Reilly."

"I found these two on the street." She adds softly: "They sometimes turn out OK here, I've heard."

"Miss Kyle?" She sees a hand place itself on the edge of the door and abruptly swing it wide open. Blake, apparently an undisclosed member of the guard, appears from behind it, eyebrows furrowed. His expression is more accusatory than welcoming, but then he looks down, sees her wards, and it turns to perplexity.

He lifts his eyes to hers and she notices his chest inflate with a deep breath.

Selina crosses her arms impatiently. "It's cold out here." But all she feels is the euphoria of relief diffusing through her body. _He's not dead._

"Oh," Blake mumbles clumsily. He glances around; everyone is staring at him. "Let her in," he orders mildly. They all step aside. A woman emerges from the crowded background and takes charge of the two children. Selina pats them each on the head awkwardly and then sighs in relief as they're taken away.

Father Reilly ushers her inside and closes the door behind her. "Please, please – come inside."

It's built like a small elementary school; the bottom floor is offices and classrooms, not meant to be lived in, but she can see sleeping bags and toys scattered everywhere. There's a steady clamor upstairs, and a bustling commotion in what she assumes to be the mess hall. It distresses her to see it so overcrowded, but there's also a warmth that she finds comforting.

"Friend of yours?" the priest asks, turning to Blake. Selina doesn't see him lift his eyebrows suggestively at Blake but she can hear it in his tone.

Blake doesn't reveal that she's an escapee from Blackgate, which probably wouldn't go over well. "Sort of," he replies - lazily, dismissively.

"They wouldn't say anything," Selina reveals to the priest. She explains what the girl had told her about the Lexington Heights fire, and Father Reilly nods gravely.

"It could be so. A lot of people died in that fire. So many families lived in that building."

Most of the curious onlookers have drifted back out of the foyer. The priest nods to her and then excuses himself, leaving her and Blake alone.

"It's good to see you," Blake mutters, the overly-common phrase obscuring his true sentiments. He glances around the room self-consciously, and she wonders if he considers this place to be far more personal than his apartment.

"I'm sorry, do I know you?" she asks innocently.

There's half of an apology on his face but he doesn't say anything.

Selina bites her lip.

"I hope you didn't kidnap them like you kidnapped the congressman," he says. There's nothing in his tone to indicate that he's teasing her.

"A girl gets charged with kidnapping _one _time and no one ever lets her forget it," Selina replies.

"What's with the hero act?"

She shrugs. "That human decency thing you're so fond of? I'm not totally unfamiliar with it, I guess."

He nods and raises those intense eyes of his to hers. "I know."

She blushes, then shakes her hair out to cover it up.

"You got my note?" he asks.

"What note?"

Blake laughs. "I _know_ you got it."

"Why?" She lifts her eyebrows. "Because you followed me?"

He chews on his cheek, then gives her a nod of concession, slightly abashed.

Selina runs her eyes over him. "How about this?" she sighs. "I'll tell you that I'm…relieved…to see that you're still alive. And then you'll admit to me something of an equal nature."

She swallows when he reaches out and tucks her hair behind her ear; her gaze following his hand in surprise.

"Come on, there's still some food left." He turns his back on her and begins walking towards the cafeteria.

She lets the orphans keep their food but doesn't turn down a cup of coffee. To say it tastes like dirt is a compliment, but somehow she ends up drinking it over a game of Scrabble with Blake. She had followed him uncertainly into a common room of sorts, knowing only that she didn't want to leave. He had sportively shoved three little boys out a large corner recliner and invited her to sit there. Before she knew it he was seated across from her, a small end table between them, and Selina can't help but think back to when they were in the same arrangement in the prison, only now they're looking over a game board instead of a diagnostic of the sewer system. He seems to recognize the parallel as well, and an ironic smile crosses his face.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Blake," she comments wryly as he distributes the pieces.

The implication of what else they could be doing is not lost on him. He pauses, but then he merely shrugs: "Thanksgiving tradition."

Selina smiles softly, but not for him to see.

The three displaced boys have ganged up and armed themselves. Blake is still thinking about his first turn when he gets shot in the arm with a foam arrow.

"These kids are being fed too much," she complains. "The underfed are lethargic." There's a steady din in the room, over a dozen of St. Swithins boys scattered around, playing at board games, video games, soldiers, and cars.

Blake humors his attackers, holding his hand against the fake wound, and then throws the arrow back with a smile. "They're just stir crazy," he tells her.

"Aren't we all?" she replies, leaning back easily in the chair.

"Missing your life of heists and galas?"

She doesn't get a chance to retort: another arrow comes flying in their direction, this time it lands squarely on her head.

"You hit John's girlfriend," she hears one of the boys whisper to another accusingly.

She looks at Blake to see if he's heard – he clearly has. She waits to see if he'll correct them – but he doesn't. He's looking at his game pieces.

Selina rolls her eyes, but she's smiling a little when she tosses the arrow back to the archer. "Too much food," she repeats to Blake.

He laughs.

He lays down his letter pieces to spell out his first word: BOX.

Three letters isn't very impressive but the X is worth quite a few points.

She adds E, R. and S to the end to make the word BOXERS. When he looks up at her, she lifts her eyebrows, as if it's a question.

He grins, but doesn't answer.

His next word is RAFT, coming down off the R.

Selina lays down B, R, I, E, uses the F of RAFT, and then S. BRIEFS. He's laughing when he looks up at her, and again she lifts her eyebrows to turn it into question.

"You're cheating," he reproves, still amused.

"Of course I am. Were you really expecting anything different?"

He rolls his eyes. "What's the point of winning if you don't play honestly?"

"There are different kinds of winning, Blake" she explains.

He spells SIREN off of the S in BRIEFS, and waits for her reaction. From any other man it might be considered flattery but she knows that Blake means it in condemnation. And a wave of acute regret about Bruce Wayne washes over her – for about the billionth time.

She chooses her next tiles randomly as she is supposed to, plays an insignificant word, and the two of them relax into a more amicable game.

Blake is hugely popular with the boys, but being his "girlfriend" doesn't earn Selina any goodwill: they're jealous of his attention to her, darting her dirty looks every time Blake declines to join them in an activity. She glares back smugly: _He's mine too_, her eyes say. The older boys drift by the open door to not-so-subtly check her out; Blake notices. They casually flee when he catches them looking at her.

She laughs. "I'm starting to feel like I have a second head or something."

"There's not a lot of women here. And the girls they go to school with aren't…" He doesn't finish.

"Aren't what?" she presses.

"Aren't like you," he completes with a shrug as he lays down his next word: ROOM.

_Too easy_, she thinks, setting down B, E, and D in the three slots before to spell BEDROOM. Not the most lucrative move in terms of points, but was there really anything else she could have done?

His lips part slightly when he sees the word.

He glances around the room surreptitiously to make sure that no one has seen, as if she has done something inappropriate. She's not sure why he's insisting on this school girl act but it's doing to her what she's trying to do to him.

"Are you staying here?" she asks quietly. Of course what she means is: "Do you have a room here?"

"I'm here sometimes," he answers cagily, dodging two subjects he'd rather not face just then.

Frustrated, she stands. "It's late."

"You should stay." He adds quickly, "I'll find a mattress and a corner for you," dispelling any notion that privacy for the two of them had ever been possible.

"I'll pass, thanks," she replies sarcastically. "I've got quite the bed to return to: a king with memory foam, Egyptian cotton sheets, 1200 thread count. It's like sleeping in a cloud." She draws out the last word, ascribing it with wondrous properties.

"It's too far," he protests.

"How do you know how far it is? Oh, so you followed me all the way back home, did you?" She's not surprised.

He sighs. "Yeah." Every time he passed by the building he thought of her up in the penthouse like a queen in a tower.

"But you won't even tell me where you're staying when I come right out and ask you? I know you don't exactly trust me, but do you really think I'm going to sell you out to Bane?"

The room hushes at the name. Selina cringes, realizing that she has probably just shattered the illusion of their holiday. She buttons up her coat, mutters "Sorry", and walks hastily for the front door.

Blake catches up with her out on the sidewalk. "I didn't mean to bring up Bane in front of them," she apologizes, upset.

"They can handle it," he says matter-of-factly. "Listen, Father Reilly doesn't even know where I'm staying and he practically raised me. It's for your own good I didn't tell you. But if you really want to know, I'm with Commissioner Gordon at his apartment right now. I invited him here but he wanted to be alone – it's the first Thanksgiving he hasn't been able to spend with his kids and it's really hard on him. But we move around a lot."

"Are you ever going to tell me why you stood me up? I'm not going to say I was hurt, but-"

"You don't make me feel safe."

She stares at him for a moment. "But you're a cop, Blake. You're attracted to that."

"I never said I wasn't."

"It's what drew Bruce to me, too. I keep thinking about how you're different from him. But you're more like him than anything else. Different experiences have made different men. But you're cut from the same cloth."

Blake says stiffly: "I won't say I'm not flattered – him being Batman and all – but I really wish you'd stop comparing me to Bruce Wayne. It makes me feel like I don't-like I don't matter to you on my own," he finishes softly, self-consciously.

His nose is red from the cold like a little boy's and its cuteness to her is almost unbearable.

She's not sure what would have happened if Father Reilly hadn't interrupted them. But he pokes out the front door and says something to Blake about bed time and the mood shifts.

Selina laughs. "So you don't just look like a little boy - you really are one?"

"It's not _my _bed time," he insists good-humoredly. "I sometimes help put the kids to sleep when I'm here – they're a bit more compliant with me. The routine – it's important. It teaches them that we're in charge, not Bane. And enough with the little boy jokes. I've seen your file, you've seen my yearbook – we're the same age."

She advances on him. "You know, nine guys out of ten in your position would have tried to get me in bed already."

He doesn't retreat. "Nine guys out of ten wouldn't know you as well as I do."

"Nine guys out of ten wouldn't be thinking about what happens afterwards, so it wouldn't matter. But you are. You know, I'd say you'd been hurt bad before, Blake, but I actually don't think that you have. Not by a woman. You're just careful. You just don't want anyone to be close. Bruce didn't either. Perhaps it's the emotional distance thing that's drawing _me_ in."

"You're one to talk." Blake's unreadable.

"Fair enough."

There's a loud crash inside.

"Too much food," Selina comments. "Sounds like they need you in there."

He nods. "Yeah."

She kisses him on the cheek. He feels it warm and wet against the dry cold. "Whatever you and the Commissioner are up to – try to keep the stupid to a minimum, OK?"

He thinks about turning his head, kissing her, and almost does - but she has already pulled away.

"I take it you're packing heat?" he calls out to her as she nears the intersection.

"Your heat!" she shouts back, pulling his piece out of her pocket and flipping it expertly in her hand like a Wild West gunslinger.

He hears another clattering inside but he watches her until she dwindles to a speck in the distance.

0000000000

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Scrabble is sexy. That is all.

Actually, that's not all. Hopefully the details of Thanksgiving and Scrabble weren't too confusing to anyone unfamiliar with them.

And, I don't want to spoil you, but if anyone is growing frustrated with the slow burn of John and Selina's relationship, stick with me because I promise that the advances in the next chapter will be significant.


	6. Chapter 6 - Rain

AUTHOR'S NOTES: 1) I know, I know: it has been eons since the last update. I AM SO SORRY. You have no idea how bad I feel about it. In fact, a lot more was supposed to happen in this chapter, but I decided to split it up because I just wanted to publish something for you guys so badly before you forgot about the story entirely. I hope you'll enjoy, and I promise you won't have to wait so long for the next chapter. 2) Also: I've changed my penname from "ashes ashes ashes" to "fandomfatale" – I hope that didn't throw anyone off or cause any problems. 3) Did you guys see Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Saturday Night Live? Ye gawds!

CHAPTER SIX - RAIN

Gordon wakes up abruptly – and not from a _pleasant_ dream - to see Blake poised at the main room window, binoculars to his right and a rifle to his left. "You're restless," he observes dryly, causing Blake to start. He sits up on the sofa, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders to guard against the assaulting cold of the unheated apartment. "I take it the power's still out."

Blake picks up on his sardonic tone and grins. "It would seem so." He himself is buried deep in three layers of sweaters and jackets. He peers out the window into the thick cloud cover, noting how much darker it is than usual. "Might be snow." He glances at the calendar: December 13. Winter will arrive sooner or later – it always does, Occupation or no.

Gordon shakes his head after checking out the sky. "Rain."

"How do you know?"

"I guess I don't. But it'll be rain."

Blake accepts that; Gordon is usually right.

"How long was I asleep?" Gordon asks.

"It's just after 5:00 now," Blake answers. He tosses him a flashlight. "It'll be dark soon."

A surprise mercenary attack on their headquarters the night before had expelled the two of them and their small band of recruits out into the streets. They had lost three men and most of their weapons in the struggle. Gordon wore their deaths heavily in his shoulders even after sleeping it off. Wary of a mole and needing time to recover from the setback, he had sent all of the others home and returned with Blake to Blake's apartment to recuperate.

"What do you think we should do?" Blake asks with a sigh, noting that Gordon's brow is furrowed, his thoughts obviously returning to their unfortunate losses the night before.

"I think we should lay low. But that's not what you want to do, is it?" Gordon poses rhetorically. "You're too smart to go out there when you're angry, John."

"Of course I'm angry," Blake snaps.

"You think I'm not? But a hotheaded retaliation isn't going to do us any good. Methodical – that's the way we win."

"It's been three months and we're not any closer to winning than we were the day this all started."

"OK, rookie. You know how to win the war. Spill it, son."

Blake sighs. "Sorry."

"You've been sending food and messages underground, keeping those men alive. Watching out for those Swithins boys. Helping me coordinate the aid drops and we're going to be getting more guns soon from the other side. That's not nothing."

"It's not enough."

"The fate of this city is not on your shoulders."

"It feels like it is."

"That's what killed the Batman, John." Gordon swallows sadly. "Don't let it kill you."

"Or you, sir," Blake replies.

Gordon smiles at him affectionately. "You look like you need to get out of here for a while. Well, we need food, candles, and Hayes will probably want to hear from us. I know how fond you are of Uptown."

Blake feigns confusion, but Gordon isn't having any of it: "You got a girl up there or something?" Gordon asks.

"I don't have a girl," Blake words carefully. To say "there's no girl" would be too much of a lie.

"Really?" Gordon rises to his feet, walks over to the kitchen table, and lifts up a beige bra with black lace overlay from off the floor. "Because I'm pretty sure this wasn't here last time. But if you want to tell me that it's yours…"

Blake shifts uncomfortably and scratches his head. "That's actually-that's evidence."

"Yeah, I know it is. Evidence of your girl."

Blake laughs stiltedly. "No, no - from a case," he stammers. And it's true – he recognizes the bra right away as Selina Kyle's; it had been amongst the things in her suitcase. She must have left it behind – on purpose, of course – when she had come to retrieve her possessions. Blake had been back to his apartment once or twice since that day, but only for a second to make sure it was still in once piece – he's not surprised that he hadn't noticed it yet. He smiles to himself: _of course she left it behind._ He spends a second wondering if she had decided to leave it for him before or after he showed up and interrupted her.

"Uh-huh," Gordon utters skeptically.

"The, uh, the_ item_ belongs to a cat burglar. Also, she's a kidnapper."

"Too bad," Gordon muses, twirling it a little. "I'll bet she's a real firecracker."

Blake walks over, takes the bra from him, and tosses it haphazardly into his bedroom. "So…food, candles, Hayes: I'm on it." He nods, assuring, and heads for the door.

Gordon watches him blankly. "Be careful out there."

"Yeah."

Outside it's growing dim as the invisible sun sets, and the dropping temperature has brought about a thick, misting fog. Blake zips his jacket up to his chin until the walking warms him up and glances around in his practiced, police-like way. He marks everyone on the street, grouping them by levels of suspiciousness, taking particular notice of anyone noticing him. He doesn't know his neighborhood very well; he can't recognize his neighbors. He never spent much time at home.

About nine blocks north of his building he passes one mercenary patrol that pays him no mind. They're organized, disciplined, and well-armed; everything the resistance isn't. Blake changes his route once they're out of sight.

He leaves a coded note for Hayes, a retired police officer and one of the Commissioner's oldest friends, in a designated drop box on 5th Street in Uptown. Hayes has been housing and protecting fugitives from Bane's regime since the start of the Occupation and Blake knows he won't let the bad news scare him off.

The note is encrypted using a copy of _A Tale Of Two Cities_ (at Gordon's suggestion) – an excessive measure, perhaps, that Blake's insomnia-addled mind had absorbed from some mediocre spy movie half-watched in the middle of the night, but he can't recognize the absurdity of it because everything already tastes like ash. The phantom triggerman leaves him feeling like they're all in a constant minefield, with only one false step bringing forth Gotham's destruction.

Selina Kyle's building is another six blocks north. Blake already knows he'll walk by it but he makes a game of pretending to think it over, like he's done nearly every day since he first followed her there. The urge is stronger tonight - the truth is that he hasn't been this discouraged since she told him what really happened to Bruce Wayne and he really just wants – needs? - to see her. He's not sure what to think when he realizes that just being around her would make him feel better. It isn't the distraction – it's something else entirely.

He strolls by her building, casually slowing in front of it. The windows of the 50th floor – the penthouse – are not much more than twinkling stars at his distance and they're diffused through the mist. He could just go inside. Just go inside and take the elevator and knock on her door. He could borrow candles.

But he doesn't, of course. He turns around and heads back towards his apartment.

He feels the first rain drops on his face a few blocks later. If he had not left in such a hurry he would have remembered to take an umbrella. But that's not the type of thing you remember when you're fleeing. He had been tempted to tell the Commissioner the full truth about Selina, but he had been afraid that he would have been forced to classify the way he felt about her, and he either doesn't want to do that, or can't. And Gordon probably wouldn't have had a problem with her stealing gems or kidnapping the congressman - the two of them weren't exactly friends - but he _was_ friends with both Bruce Wayne and Batman, and would have had a harder time overlooking the part she had played in his (more than likely) death. .

The only reason Blake had not told Gordon what he knew about Bruce Wayne and the Batman – not just the circumstances of his disappearance, but the very fact that they were one and the same man – was that he did not want Gordon to have to lose two friends at once. Gordon had never asked him how he knew that the Batman was gone. Just like he had never asked the Batman who he really was. It just didn't matter. Not really. It didn't change anything.

Now that it's dark the streets are nearly empty. He passes by a young red-haired woman, she smiles at him motivatedly, and it surprises him because he feels like he ought to have a neon blinking sign on his forehead that reads "Interested In Another Woman". He smiles back politely and rushes ahead.

The rain picks up and bats him in the face. He scurries under the nearest awning, but most of the sidewalk isn't covered and before long there's a trickle running down his neck and soaking the layer against his skin. The pouring rain is an assault on his eyes and ears but he still senses a figure behind him that seems to have appeared from the mist. His gun is out and pointed before he has even turned around.

"Wow, Blake – are you trying to impress me?" Her tone verges on sarcasm, but Selina Kyle's eyebrows are lifted in obvious admiration of his speed and agility. She looks down at the barrel of the gun he has not lowered and says with feigned impatience: "I thought you and I were past this."

She's a wet vision – droplets running down her pretty face and cascading through her loose hair. And she's in the catsuit, skintight and black and shining and skintight from neck to foot. For a moment he can only stare at her. The he nods: "We are, Miss Kyle," and places the gun back in his waist holster.

This "Miss Kyle" business is starting to irritate her. She's not sure when she should have become "Selina" to him, only that it should have happened already. She knows he's not just being polite. And she knows why it bothers her, which only bothers her even more.

A tank comes rolling around the corner. "Not so fast; you still might need it!" Selina utters in reference to the gun, grabbing his chest by his jacket and yanking him into a boxed-in cranny underneath a nearby fire escape. It's delightfully cramped; he notices how close they are to each other before he wonders what the trouble is, feels every point of contact between her body and his, lets himself recognize each breath that is shared.

Her eyes are peering out at the road through the break between the stairs; she watches as the tank turns the next corner. "Bane's men have a warehouse over here,' she begins to explain quietly. "Food and guns. There was an attack on it just after sunset. I take it some things are missing because the neighborhood is crawling with mercenary patrols and they've been harassing everyone in sight."

He's listening, but mostly he's looking at her neck. Its contours are pronounced as she stretches her head to the side to see out into the street. He reaches out and traces the line beneath her ear with his index finger.

Startled, she whips her eyes back to meet his. He's startled as well, and withdraws his hand quickly. "We don't really have time for that," she says evenly, running her eyes over him in assessment. She's acutely aware of her pounding heart.

He laughs self-deprecatingly, but chokes over it.

"But…" she begins. She reaches up suddenly, takes hold of his collar with both hands, and pulls his face down towards hers. His graceless laugh dies abruptly against her aggressive lips - replaced with shock and then a gradual, thick smile as he dives into her. He slides an arm around her waist, pressing her into his chest, and puts his other palm against the brick wall of the building that shelters them, falling with her against the surface. He can't believe how good she smells, like leather and petrichor and lavender. Her skin is cold and his mouth is on fire; he wants to warm up every inch of exposed skin with a kiss and lick off the rainwater streaming down her neck. But when she comes up for air a few seconds later she releases her grip, ripping apart the magnetism locking them together, and she pushes him back a few inches, gently but firmly.

Dizzily she seeks the wall behind her for support. "So…we're good now?" she asks, far from nonchalant but doing a good impression of it, and still panting. "The air has been cleared?"

He leans over her as if he's going to sweep her up into another kiss, and it's all he wants to do, but instead he agrees. "The air is clear. Tell me more about the attack."

She peeks out at the street; it's vacant. "I was up on the roof and heard gunfire. I went to take a look; I like to know what's going on around here. The firefight was over when I got there. It wasn't you guys?"

"I don't know what you mean by that," Blake replies.

She rolls her eyes. "Well that's too bad. I was hoping you might be able to put a stop to it. Because if something like this happens again, Bane will probably put the city under a curfew."

Blake frowns thoughtfully. "That would not be good."

"No."

"How did you find me?"

"I was watching my building to make sure none of the patrols came by. The last thing I want is Bane's men shaking down my place. I saw you."

Blake laughs, biting his lip. "Of course you did."

"Stalker," she taunts. "Do I need to get a restraining order?"

"I had business up here."

"Business?"

"Yes. Unimportant, nonspecific business. It's the only reason I left my apartment."

She nods mockingly. "I see." But then her face turns grave. "Be careful, Blake. The mercenaries are offering food and amenities in exchange for tips about the resistance and the locations of fugitives from Bane's 'justice'."

Blake can only assume the new incentives were a factor in the attack on the resistance the night before. He shakes his head dejectedly. "They've invincible."

She sighs, and runs her fingers through his damp hair in an understated gesture of solace.

He closes his eyes.

"Come back with me to my place. We shouldn't be out on the streets," she says quietly.

"No. I have to get back to the Commissioner. He needs to know about this." Blake disentangles himself from her slowly, and then heads out to the sidewalk.

"It can wait until tomorrow," Selina protests. "There's no power in your part of town. You don't even have a fireplace. You're all wet - you'll freeze. The penthouse is only _three _blocks away."

"What about Jen? She'll recognize me; she knows I'm a cop. I can't go back to your place. It's not safe."

"I'll take care of Jen."

He's still walking.

She stops following and calls out his name softly: "John…" It's unfamiliar on her tongue, and reverberates powerfully through her.

He freezes at his name, is still for a moment, and then turns around to face her. "OK. I'll come with you."


End file.
